


The Structure Brained

by TallysGreatestFan



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Autistic Character, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Health Issues, autistic Lennier, comming out as autistic, internalized ableism, suicide attempt (mentioned)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:14:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27813646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TallysGreatestFan/pseuds/TallysGreatestFan
Summary: Delenn accidentally discovers a secret Lennier was so ashamed of he hid it from her all these years. However is it as bad as his self-hate lets him think?
Relationships: Delenn/Lennier
Comments: 5
Kudos: 4





	The Structure Brained

His thoughts of having a bit time for himself to recover from the mission and perhaps take a book and read it in the garden were destroyed as soon as he brought his data crystals into his office and found several papers for him. It was some application allowing the ruins on one of their planets to be explored signed by its alien government – no surprise - , a reply on a scientific report he had wrote, so ordinary so less troubling too, and the results of the diagnosis test. It was opened and in their house, so there was no way that Delenn hadn’t seen it, and it were only a few mental disorders and percents behind it, so it also couldn’t be that she hadn’t read it because of respecting his privacy. It was simply too short and to fastly read for that.

He felt like he would drop in a pit upon realizing that, suddenly all his future with Delenn and his job as the Rangers scientific expert in examining historic alien artifacts and the fragile peace he had finally managed to create for himself seemed to be vanished. He sat down, unable to think and feel anything other than just the bottomless fear. It didn’t even matter what he would do next.

He hoped Delenn would have an emergency conference or a sudden meeting on another planet so that he could at least start to figure out how to behave. He would have to call Vir. But he didn’t know about his disorder, didn’t he? Then his aunt, or Noli. They were the only ones who already knew. But at this time it was night at the part of Minbar where the monastery stood…

He stumbled to the living room, wanting to watch something until the shock was gone enough so that he could think properly again.

He just wanted to sit down as he saw Delenn resting on that pillow near the window. His first reflex was to flee and hoping that she hadn’t seen him yet, but she definitely had.

He folded his hands, pressing his fingers against each other and stroking, in hope the calming sensation of their structure and form would help him to know how to behave. It didn’t.

Should he keep quiet and hope she would never bring up that topic? But there was no doubt that she knew, not saying anything would never make this not happened. Should he apologize – she was his best friend and soulmate and lover, she would have deserved to know just how mentally crippled the attaché and now Anla’Shok she had depended so much on was.

,,I deeply apologize for not telling you, I am so sorry, you should have known, there is no way to atone for it…”

He was struck off by Delenn: ,,About that you are structure-brained?”

He breathed in panicked. She knew. Now he was absolutely certain that she knew.

He felt himself shake. As he looked at his hands, his fingers and palms were quivering as if he would had an really bad chill from going outside unclothed in deepest winter.

How long had it been since he had quivered because of to much negative emotions the last time? Had it been as he had watched this massacre the Drakh wrecked? As he had walked back to his quarters after admitting his feelings to Delenn? Or as he knew that Delenn and Sheridan celebrated the final ritual of their courtship, and he was hiding at the Zocalo while all their other friends were celebrating with them, at this impulsive, half-assed attempt to kill himself with drinking toxic Ethanol, mixed to something called Cuba Libre, he had baked out half way because it would have been so egoistic and entitled to hurt Delenn like this (even if he hadn’t done it in any way to punish her but because he just couldn’t deal with all this pain and knowledge how weak and melodramatic and annoying and egoistic for longing after Delenns closeness and friendship even if she didn’t wanted it anymore he was, and knowing that he would ever be this terrible person, that he was responsible for Marcus death, the memory and panic and all those deaths in the Shadow War and in their destroyed cities, and not even being able to talk to Vir anymore because he had his own crippeling psychical troubles that were more important than his, and he just didn’t knew how he could endure this even just one more day)?

,,I… I was to ashamed about it and in the first year I was to occupied with dealing with all the new chaotic things on the station and was to nervous about serving an Satai to tell it, and then you changed and the war came and I should have said it but there was no time and you should have deserved an aide who isn’t socially disabled but I had already sworn that I would never leave your side and you needed me and perhaps for the first time I didn’t felt like a burden and fitting nowhere but as if I could truly serve our species… serve you. And I was afraid that if you knew you would have not put me under the same kind of pressure you needed to survive this and would have to deal with another difficulty in also having to watch out for me, and…. I understand if you would not want a mate or head of the Rangers historical science department who….”, he blustered out.

,,Lennier.”, she broke him off, slowly standing up and approaching him. Her hand stroking over his shoulder was calming and seeing the sadness and empathy in her face felt good even if he did not feel as if he deserved it.

,,Lennier”, her other hand came up to his face, caressing his jaw and cheek in this slow way that still felt unreal sometimes, leaving pleasant, subtle traces of warmth underneath his skin, ,,You are such a wonderful person.”, he shook his head and her grip on his face became firmer, turning his look to her, ,,So intelligent and loyal and brave and kind, and even if I would have known about this it would still be true.”

,,I don’t feel like that.”

,,Surely you don’t do. The kindest minds are most often the most humble ones. I don’t believe that an difference in how you process the world is as terrible as you think.”

,,It is an classified disability. Of course it is. I am only able to contribute anything to society because I was trained against this damn brain damage since I was seven years old.”

Delenns expression went blank. ,,You were diagnosed as you were seven?”

,,Yes.”, he gulped out, ,,But the monks and nuns were well aware that I was… _different_ even before that. I remember several test from my earliest childhood on.”, he laughed angrily, ,,My mother and my father later said that the diagnosis was an relief for them, because now they knew _what_ exactly was wrong with me. They never even spent a thought on what it meant for me. That I, in my childish dumbness, tried to fake the diagnosis paper because I didn’t wanted to be ,mentally disabled’ and have a ,deep development disorder’ and an ,almost uncureable disability’ and ultimately an burden to my parents and my clan and society. It haunted me for my whole life.”

,,I am sorry”, Delenns voice sounded flat.

He laughed mirthfully again: ,,My mother found me at our computer terminal, having screenshot the locked file and erasing these parts with some picture-adapting software, crying. I hated the mind healing lessons because it felt like it would just constantly remind me at everything I did wrong, everything I didn’t behave normal in, even if that surly can’t be the way they treated me. It was my biggest secret. I didn’t told anyone, only a few teachers knew, and I always refused to take any help or get a pass for the severely disabled because I was too proud to. And then my family was killed in the war against the humans, and suddenly I was alone without the few people who knew how to deal with my strangeness, and with all those emotional pain.”

He snorted hatefully: ,,I was this annoying kid at elementary school that always started crying at the smallest problem, just over seeing their father leaving or getting hit in a painful way during material arts training, or got a scratch from some thorns. So I learned to endure physical pain until one day I could withstand the closing door of a shuttle making a deep, bleeding cut all over my thigh that looked as if somebody had amputated and sewed it back on and I only hiss for a few seconds. But I never really managed learning how to endure emotional pain.

I was such an insane, stupid, annoying little kid.”

He felt Delenn closing her arms around him, her eyes shimmering with almost-tears and her mouth half open in a painful expression at hearing how much he loathed himself.

,,So I did all in my power to become normal, become unobtrusive and easily to look over, become useful.”

,,Many people have a identical neurodivergence to Structure Brains. The humans call it Autism. It is no illness, it is a natural, needed even part of how peoples minds are. I think I even read somewhere that some scientists believe it is an integral part of the development of civilizations. But almost everywhere individuals with this way of thinking are bullied and hated no matter how important and much needed they are for their societies. Were you bullied to, Lennier?”, Delenns voice grew flatter and flatter and lower and lower as she said that.

,,No. But I always felt that I didn’t quite belong anywhere. I was always isolated from the others, they just ignored me usually and looked with amusement at how I didn’t got this or that absolutely obvious social behavior, and I had only a few friends. But at least I was intelligent and good at studying, I said to myself, even if the others were so much better than me in every single other way.”

,,But you are so skilled at so many things. You are not only one of the most intelligent people I know, you are also kind and compassionate” – how could he be compassionate when that was literally what mostly consisted this disability, ,,and polite and diplomatic and so eager to learn and to respect other people, you know how to helm a spaceship and how to talk in dozens of languages, you’re deeply spiritual and you are an frightening material artist.”

,,Only because I worked so much harder than every other person to become good in these things. I was quite a fast learner when it came to academic knowledge, but I still had to interact to do so, and I kept trying to keep my weird outsider thoughts on topics to myself, went to the others and talked with them and participate in their events, even if it exhausted me and I was always at risk of having a breakdown in front of them and embarrassing myself with it. My skills at diplomacy and reading people are just information for information about social interactions and politics and what this tone of voice or that expression indicates I collected and categorized throughout my whole life or memorized out of theoretical books.

Tha’Domo calmed me and didn’t leave me enough time to think and hate myself. It made me feel empowered, but still I always was the worst person of my rank, sometimes even people one or two ranks below me easily beat me and knew more about the forms.”

,,But Lennier”, Delenn said enthralled and proudly. He had no idea why, ,,this doesn’t means that you are weak or stupid. This shows how incredible strong you are.”

He couldn’t help but smile as reluctant pride walled up in him. But somehow, it still felt a bit artificial.

,,Everybody tried to bring me away from diplomatic studies. Of course, dealing with interactions not only between people but also between nations is the absolute least fitting thing to do for me.”, he laughed, an mocking, apathetic sound.

,,I still remember when you came to me at that first day. You were so young and sweet and nervous, and I will never forget the moment where you looked up and finally saw your eyes, wide and full of shyness and curiosity and kindness, your mouth curved into your insecure little smile. I must have looked just the same to Dukhat as I was assigned to serve the Grey Council. And I always wanted to train you as he trained me, so that you could be my successor one day, and knowing you better only strengthened my believe that you would be the best suited for this. I saw you as somebody who is able to do great things, who has the ability to change things that were stuck in ever-sameness for far too long. And you still are this person, whether I know that you are Structure Brained or not.”

,,You were? You truly thought I had the potential to become a great leader like you?”

She smiled, and caressed his back. They were half lying, half sitting against the couch now.

,,Maybe just a great leader, maybe an even greater than myself. Who knows. But I was just as shy and insecure as you as I began my service.”

Strange as it sounded, he had not the slightest problems in imagine her, a woman with the same features and voice and most of her personality, but small and timid, always watching out not to occupy too much space. He remembered her from the brief time he had seen her during the dreaming, but sometimes, he could still see her, hear her, feel her in the way Delenn moved or her expression or her tone of voice, and sometimes he could feel her in himself too.

,,My whole life, I just tried to become invisible. Normal. An perfect servant to the Minbari people, always working in the background, ensuring that the great souls could do their work without interference and that everything goes the way it should, an humble scholar and monk who never speaks trough his presence, but only lets the wonders and truths he finds speak. To become the perfect Minbari, because deep down I always knew that I would never be able”, he felt his voice break, ,,to truly belong to them.”

,,I know this feeling.”, Delenn said, and he had known that, but hearing it relating to him felt so soothing, as if this would be okay, as if this wasn’t just some effect of his damn damaged mind if the greatest leader of their time, the woman who had literally made her own body to a supernatural symbol of how they all were citizens of the same universe, who had lead them against the darkness and ended the civil war and united all civilizations, had felt like this too. Maybe it even was what had made her able to see a so much greater picture than every other Minbari.

But he still had to continue, still had to feel this familiar pain, this familiar constant blemish again, because Delenn had to know who he truly was: ,,Isn’t… belonging what makes our civilization so great? That we believe and work and move as one people? Isn’t this what all our lives purpose is, to contribute something to this community? But if you have such problems with social situations, if you are different and don’t fit in, doesn’t this mean that you can’t belong with them, ever?”

,,But Lennier”, Delenns voice was so tender that it couldn’t be true. He didn’t deserved it. He could have never done anything worth to deserving such love, such pain for somebody else just because of his own pain, ,,you are the most perfect Minbari I ever meet.”

She looked down, smiling ashamed. And somehow he saw both the shy girl and the wise mistress in this moment.

,,In truth, I actually envied you, sometimes. I wished that I could ever be able to be such a… good person… like you. Be so fully and deeply Minbari in everything I do, like you.”

Now the pain and disbelieving warmth in his heart and the feeling to not be worth this cracked trough and broke down on him. He tried to fight it, but he couldn’t help to let a sobbing howl of bottomless pain and reluctant gratitude escape his lips. He blinked, tried to look away, but it did no good. He wept.

And as he was ashamed and yet strangely relieved about finally being able to let a bit of this pressure go, Delenn took his head and pressed it to her shoulder, stroking over his back and crest.

He felt so secure with her arms closing around him, soothing pressure against his flank and waist. She was warm, and the form of her body covered with her robe, the way her back felt and her scent were wonderfully familiar. He buried his face in her shoulder, cherished her strength he could cling to, and finally brushed his cheek against her neck. Firm but delicate fabric ended over only slightly rougher, warm skin. A strand of her hair silked over his forehead and he slowly felt his tension leaving.

,,Shhh. It is okay. I am here with you.”, he could hear that she was near tears herself, and so he embraced her tighter and smoothed over her spine and shoulders comfortingly, trying to show her how much she meant to him.

The pain was still burning inside him, the knowledge that he would never truly be a perfect Minbari, but it was farer away somehow, with Delenn embracing him, and with feeling her heartbeat and hearing her breath and her scent surrounding him like a curtain. Dry and ethereal with just a bit of the thick note of a humans waxy hair and heavy scent shining trough.

He signed. She laughed softly, and brought him fully down to lie. Now they were streached out on the couch, bodies entangled.

,,You are far to wonderful to hide. It would be a shame to withheld the universe something so intriguing.”

Hearing this words felt so good that it hurt.

,,Do you truly think I am?”, he said in wonder.

,,My Lennier.”, she kissed him on the top of his head, and then softly on his lips. Her lips only brushed slowly and lightly over his, her tongue barely touched his, rather echos of a kiss than the actual thing. But its was still beautiful.

,,How could you ever think you are not?”

And it sent another shot of painfull bliss trough his heart.

He was aware that she didn’t meant the question to be answered, but he had to. He had to finally say all these thoughts aloud, he couldn’t bear them alone any longer.

,,If you… witness so often how easily the knowledge of how to behave, how to make friends, how to have charisma and how to find love comes to others, while you work and work on it and still never manage, if you hear so often how damaged and disabled you are… Somewhen there is no other conclusion than thinking that you are indeed lesser than everybody else.”

He shook his head, smiled emptily: ,,Maybe that was what made it so easy for me to sacrifice myself. If I am already are worth nothing, it would be more precious to sacrifice my life than to continue my burdening existence.”

,,Lennier, who said such terrible things to you?”, he felt sorry for saying this then as he heard how utterly disturbed she sounded, ,,How could you believe them?”

Another sob escaped him: ,,Nobody said this. It was entirely my own conclusion from my experiences. And witnessing how…. how you didn’t needed me anymore as soon as you and Sheridan were close, and how easy all these things I wished I could do came to Sheridan, and how charismatic he is… it didn’t exactly helped.”

,,It may have seemed like this because he never showed any of his struggles to anyone, but being a leader wasn’t easy for him. And I always needed you. John could have never replaced you, and I am deeply sorry if I made you feel this way.”

,,You don’t need to apologize. It is only trough my silly self hate that I perceived it like this”

,,Lennier, your emotions and your fears aren’t silly.”

,,But they seem, compared with the reasons everybody else has for theirs.”

,,Never apologize for the way you are.”

,,I just feel like I have to. I just feel that if I am, if my whole way to think and feel and be is classified as an disability that everything I feel must be automatically silly and weird.”

,,Oh Lennier….”, Delenn shook her head, and he saw tears running down her face too as well. Deep shame for having upset her so much shot trough him, and he blurted further, perhaps as if to comfort her despite even he knew that what he was saying was the opposite of comfort: ,,There was a time when I actually thought about let them cure it. To let them cut open my skull and let them rip my brain into pieces and sew it back together in a different order and kill whole parts of it and put them in the bin, to let magnetic fields rush trough my tissue and scare cells in other parts to grow and built new pathways, to drown my system with artificial oxytoxcin, even if I knew that this would be such a deep surgery that just the chances of surviving it would have only been seventy percent, with the possibility of it leaving me a vegetable for the rest of my miserable life. It was only due me thinking even with my current disability I would benefit my society to much to risk something so dangerous that I did not consent to it.”

,,Lennier, I will never let anybody hurt your beautiful mind.”

That was giving him the rest, with a howling sob he collapsed right back in her embrace and cried and cried.

Delenn was there the whole time, caressing him and soothing over his head and shoulders and mumbeling ,,I love you, Lennier” and ,,Sshh, I am here… Its okay…”over and over again and still it felt so unreal that anybody could ever love him, him, nerdy, awkward, shy, disabled Lennier who didn’t even looked good.

After he did not know how long he was to exhausted to cry any further, and he simply clung to Delenn and cherished her warmth and safety.

He already thought their dialogue would be over, and they would spent the rest of the evening with cuddeling and maybe talking about light things, as Delenn said, as if that was something that had haunted her head since he had said it: ,,How can you think you are not worthy of me, not worthy to exist when… when you consider me as”, her voice broke, ,,worthy to?”

,,Delenn, no…”, was all he could say, to petrified by fear and the aching pain of _knowing_ that feeling to find anything more helpful.

Her eyes now shimmered with the same burning, everything consuming self hate he was all too familiar with from himself. He was just strong enough to endure feeling it himself, but witnessing her suffering from it, too…

,,Delenn, I love you.”, how desperate these words could sound, ,,And you are a good person, even if you did a terrible mistake once.”

She shook her head. Her expression was neutral, just her everyday-face, but over her unmoving expression tears were streaming.

,,How can I even deserve to live after all the crimes I committed? No matter what good I ever did, the dead will never be able to come back because of it, the scars in the souls will never be fully able to heal. It can’t be undone.”

,,I know”, he knew that train of thoughts, but he still was never able to break trough this terrible, terrible truth. And so he simply hugged her, pressing her to his body to gift her strength, and listended.

,,No matter what I do, if I change my own very body to a symbol of interstellar understanding, I will always be myself. There is no escape. There is no escape, Lennier.”

He almost had to weep at the hopeless despair in her voice.

,,I spent so long searching for a soul healer.”, oh, he remembered all too well how difficult the search for someone who already knew most of all those secrets of the sphere of the Grey Council, who had known her since before the war or at least her as Satai, had been: ,,And now after I finally found one, I… I still sometimes feel”, her throat worked, ,,as if nothing would become better, could become better. Now, the soul is so miracoluously complex, of course it needs time to heal, but still…”

,,I know this feeling. It is the same with me after all, too. I was so foolish for believing my pain and anxiety and this knowledge that I wouldn’t ever be worthy of you” – ,,don’t say that” - ,,would fade after we just started our relationship.” So much she had already know even before his confession.

She laughed desperately. Quickly before she could get lost in her dark thoughts even further, he asked: ,,Any helpful new data about it?”

She shrugged: ,,Its certainly a severe depression, and she said this feeling of not belonging anywhere, of being unreal and separated from the rest of the universe is as well a part of that as also a way my mind is different and slight dissociation. She was not sure if it is caused by my transformation or if I had it already to some degree my whole life, though. She is still exploring if there is also very light PTSD from my experience with the Inquisitor and the war or if this is simply a part of the depression”, she snorted, ,,There I go thinking the war and all the struggles are finally over, and then…

Sometimes I wish I would have stayed with John. Maybe with him I would have been able to hide this part forever in the farest corner of my soul.”

,,But you can’t turn back time. And you need someone who knows all of you. And”, he felt selfish for saying that, but for some reason he thought it would help her, ,,I need you.”

And he waited for the terrible conclusion of her feeling nothing would become better, ,,I don’t want anymore.” At least that didn’t came.

,,I don’t feel this bad right now, but I know that it can come back any time, it is always lurking in the background.”

,,I know you would never do this, not because you fear death to much but because you would leave your responsibilities behind then.”, he said, rather to reassure himself than her. She only nodded with a blank expression.

,,I fear for myself.”, she whimpered.

Then she breathed in quivering, as for bracing herself for something new: ,,My soul healer said that I can’t change anything about the fact that I will always be me, never truly be able to leave that behind.”, her voice broke, he saw how she tried to hold back tears and failed, ,,She said that I have to accept it. But how can I accept something so terrible?”

He embraced her and stroke over her back calmingly. He was well aware that that didn’t helped that much.

,,This was said to me before too. That when I don’t take the risk to let myself be cured I would always have this disability. It is a part of me. But I never managed to accept that. It is just to shameful and pitiful. But you, Delenn… If you could only see yourself like I do.”

She smiled sadly: ,,If you could only see yourself like I see _you_ , Lennier.”

More time passed, in which they calmed down a bit and stayed in their safe embrace.

,,I wish I would have known. I could have made so many things so much easier for you.”

,,I would have become a burden to you once more. I am only a burden to everybody around me.”

,,That is not true. You are the most selfless person I ever meet. And I am your friend, it wouldn’t have been a burden to help you, Lennier.”

He breathed out and felt some of his tension vanish.

,,How stressed out you were after coming back from tasks somewhere on the markets, in the crowds… If I only would have known… Your difficulties with bodily contact, your excitation over certain topics in which you would blutter out so many information about them. It all makes sense now. I would have known so much better how to deal with some of the problems you faced with not knowing how to behave in certain situations… with this… situation back then with you, me and John. “

,,I was too ashamed.”, he said tiredly.

“You truly could have told me every secret, why not this one?”, she repeated.

“Perhaps I feared that I would only be seen as my disability then, not as myself.”

“You mean so much more to me than whatever label they put on you, how could I only see you as that?”

He smiled, and felt tears in his eyes again.

,,Surly there are some parts of it you like?”, she asked softly.

He had to think about this for a moment. ,,It is a wonderful feeling to indulge in knowledge and history of certain topics. To get lost in it, to feel how your mind becomes wider and wider to absorb all these information. Its hours and hours of pure luck, so deeply that I sometimes even forget to eat or drink.

Sometimes when it is quiet around me I hear beautiful things most other people probably wouldn’t have witnessed, small birds or wind rushing trough leaves or the humming of the stations engines, and I see beautiful details as well, colors and textures and width, the universe in all its beauty. And…”

He blushed even just thinking at it, but he imagined the look on Delenns face if she would hear it and it was absolutely worth it.

,,Tactile information overwhelms me very quickly, and walking trough a crowd is pure horror. But… contradictory to what they tell about me and my brothers and sisters touch can also feel very good to us, just because it’s so intense. And your touch is wonderful, especially because how strong I feel every detail of it. At our pleasure-seeking ritual, at first I was shocked at how strong and physical it all is… But now… Delenn, making love with you feels incredible.”

He could practically see her warm smile before he actually saw it.

,,The intensity… It becomes nothing more than you and I in this moment, your sight and sounds and scent and touch, it is so intense, so much that everything else ceases to exist in this moment, even my ever-present doubts about myself.

It feels like your fingertips on my skin echo all over my body, as if my whole being would answer to the call of your wanting, of being yours.”, he felt himself blush a bit at how corny that sounded, but it just felt like the right way to describe it, like in an old myth, ,,How smooth your lips feel on mine or on my neck, how they rustle over my skin, feeling the softness of your skin brushing against me, these soft signs you make that, despite being not loud at all, hall in my head and echo in my body, concentrating only on what you do or what I do to give you pleasure, so that there is no space for anything else than wondering what stroke of my fingers and movements of my tongue or move to do next, cataloguing the way you feel and how you convulse your face and tense and relax your body, the shudders that rush trough you… Or your hands, so slender and elegant and strong and skilled…”

He heard her breathing harder, warm air against his neck. Her hands pressed tighter against his back, her hips flinched closer against his.

,,It is so much that it is almost too much to fit inside me, but only almost.”

,,So that’s why with certain ways…”

He nodded: ,,Yes. Being…” He had to overcome himself to say it even now, even if he had actually done it with her and the thought brought vivid memories of her weight over him, her hotness and gasps and the feeling of her thin, wiry muscles shifting under smooth skin, how he moved himself to follow her rhythm, ,,Being one with you… It is wonderful. I am so incredibly close to you, feel you without any space between us, it is overwhelming. But it is so intense, so much that it would be far too often to do it every time we make love, and it’s such overwhelming touch that I… that its to overwhelming to…”, he gave up, he simply didn’t managed to say it. ,,It is not your fault. In fact, it rather is that you are too good instead of doing something wrong or similar issues. You don’t need to worry about it.”

Her voice was hoarse and low: ,,I am simply feeling bad because its unfair that you would get lesser pleasure.”, she raised her head a bit and kissed his neck, slowly followed the tendon of his neck where every movement of her tongue sent waves of pleasure trough his whole body.

,,Thank you for letting me know this, this will be very helpful…”

His breath caught, and she hummed low and let her hands wander down his back, searching for a way under his garments: ,,Hmmm, you left my quite tense, describing how this feels for you.”

To say that his body hadn’t become ready to serve her during remembering these things and feeling her against him would be a blantant lie, but as much as he liked the thought of it, doing it in truth still felt to vulnerable and risky for him now. Delenn and her insatiable libido…

,,I am deeply sorry that I aroused you without being able to relieve you of your tension, but… I still feel to vulnerable for that. Maybe we could just continue to cuddle and caress each other and kiss?”

He heard her smile. ,,As you wish. And no need to apologize.”

Warmth spread trough his heart. She pulled her arms closer around him, and he snuggled up to her, burying his face in her shoulder.

,,I love you.” Somehow, it still felt as unreal as the first time he had heard it, just after their Shan’Fal.

,,I love you too.”, and it still felt unreal being able to say that.

,,I love you because of the way you are. You are my soulmate, and I love you because you are you. Never feel like there is something wrong about how you are, my Lennier.”

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this like two years ago for Autism Acceptance Month but then did not publish it because that fandom was just a hellscape. No idea if its still so bad, but I just wanted to publish it. 
> 
> I have this idea that Lennier is autistic for quite some time, there are just so many small details I see myself in. But I hated myself so much that I could not see someone so selfless and heroic as Lennier be like that for a long time. By now I think that he might even be so self-sacrificing and loyal because of it. 
> 
> Damn, I just hope this does not gets me hate because I dared to write not only about Lennier in a positive light but also about this ship. 
> 
> Please comment, no matter how long, I love comments!


End file.
